Described below are techniques for helping a user work with and manage both physical and digital documents. For many years, information workers have increasingly come to accomplish tasks using software such as word processing applications, email applications, spreadsheet applications, graphics applications, and others. These applications typically work with units of information referred to as documents. For example, a word processing application might work with text oriented documents. These digital documents are persistently stored and then accessed from time to time. While it is possible to view and edit a digital document with a corresponding application, it is often desirable to print the digital document in the form of a physical or paper document. Printed documents are convenient to read, manually annotate, transport, share, and so on.
Working with both printed and digital versions of documents can be time consuming and difficult. People spend time moving between paper and digital documents as they choose the medium that works best for each part of an activity. For example, writing a proposal might involve brainstorming on paper, typing up a digital draft, printing it to read and annotate on paper, perhaps sharing with a colleague who further manually annotates the paper, and then sending an updated digital version to colleagues for feedback. While writing code, a programmer might refer to hand written notes on a printed copy of a specification document while also viewing digital documents related to the printed copy, for example, source code files and data files. Currently, people move awkwardly between physical and digital documents. There have been no tools to help people work smoothly with both physical and digital documents. There has been no way to easily manage relationships between digital and paper artifacts. It has not been convenient for a person to locate a paper document's digital version, or the reverse. Nor has it been convenient to perform operations on a paper document's digital original or on digital documents that are related to a physical document that a person is currently working with.